In contrast with the simple sensors explored earlier, vision systems are much more complex, which results in substantial hardware, optics, and imaging silicon. Vision systems start with a lens that observes a scene. A lens provides focus, but also provides more light saturation to the sensing element. In modern vision systems, one of two types of sensing elements is used: charge-coupled devices (CCD), or complementary metal-oxide (CMOS) devices. The difference between CMOS and CCD can be generalized as:
- CCD: Charge is transported from the sensor to the edge of the chip to be sampled sequentially via an analog-to-digital converter. CCDs create high-resolution and low-noise images. They consume considerable power (100x that ...
